Friday, June 11, 2010

Opinions about Perdue soften

Bev Perdue's approval numbers are still nothing to write home about but she's making progress. The percentage of North Carolinians expressing unhappiness with her job performance this month is at its lowest level since April of 2009, with 45% of voters giving her poor marks to 31% who think she's doing a good job.

There's a lot more hope for Perdue moving forward than there was a year ago. Her current approval spread of -14 represents a 9 point improvement from June of 2009 when she was at -23 (30/53). If she continues to make that kind of slow but steady progress over the course of the next year and a half she'll be in decent shape when reelection time rolls around.

Republican legislators hope to use Perdue as an anchor on their Democratic opponents this fall but her approval numbers are superior to their -24 spread at 28/52. Perdue may not be popular but she's more well liked than the GOP legislative leadership.

One thing that's proven to be interesting about Perdue's approval numbers since she took office is that she's never received a particular boost from women. She is more popular with them at 33% approval to 28% with men but that's much less of a gap along gender lines than Barack Obama sees in the state. 53% of women think he's doing a good job to only 38% of men.

Perdue has a ways to go but year 2 of her term seems to be going better than year 1 and if the economy improves her approval numbers may be back to par by the time it really matters.

4 comments:

One of the things puzzling me is Barack's strength in the South. This is to me bizarre. For instance, he is at 50 percent in FL, mid 40's in North Carolina, ok in S.C., and even crosses 40 in TX. Yet these numbers diverge little from the rest of the country. Perhaps his strong minority base is at play?

Lets think Greene, Alvin Greene. So called Democrats being exposed as racists. Elite Dems are displaying the soft bigotry of low expectations.

They claim to care about African Americans then act shocked when they accomplish something without the hierarchy of the mighty machine. Whether this is fraud is besides the point. The point is the people you rely on to vote for you shock you when they succeed. And that is as bad as any Tea Partier guys.

2010 Democrats sound exactly like 2006 Republicans: Americans may be upset at my party, but no way they'll vote for the other guys.

The anti-Democratic wave is not going to dissipate before November.

"Less than one-third of Americans say they are inclined to support their House representative in November, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll, a level lower than in 1994, when Democrats lost control of the House after 40 years in power."